Law and Social Norms.

Posner, E. (2000). Law and Social Norms. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press.
Posner argues that social norms are sometimes desirable yet sometimes odious, and that law is critical to enhance good social norms and undermine bad ones. He goes on to argue that the proper regulation is a delicate and complex task, and that current understanding is inadequat for guiding judges and lawmakers. What is needed, and what this book offers, is a model of the relationship between law and social norms.
Posner wishes to improce the economic analysis of law by incorporating it into a more rigorous understanding of the impact on behaviour of the social meaning of action. In his lucidly written and sharpely argued book on the relationship between law and “non-legal mechanisms of coopertion”, Posner contends that many conceptual confusions and embarrasing puzzles that have been generated by the economic analysis of law can be cleared up, and the research paradigm as a whole can be asvanced, by taking account of the pervasive and powerful role of social norms.